China Mountain Zhang (23 page)

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Authors: Maureen F. McHugh

BOOK: China Mountain Zhang
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I see the bus, far up the street. Segmented buses look as if they are hinged in the middle, they bend a bit when they go around corners.
“I’m not feeling very well,” Haitao says. “Maybe I’ll go back and take a nap. You go on, celebrate your good mark.” He smiles tiredly, “I forgot to say congratulations.”
“Don’t go back,” I say. “You’ll just sit by yourself, that’s bad, I know.”
“I’ll take a nap,” Haitao says.
“No you won’t, you’ll try to sleep but you won’t. I promise, we’ll only be gone an hour, you’ll sleep better if you do something.”
He shakes his head. The bus is coming.
“Haitao,” I say, “I don’t know how to dress, what to buy.” I remember feeling the way he does. “If you won’t come shopping with me, I want to go back to your flat with you.”
The bus stops, the door hisses open.
He shakes his head again, but gets on. I palm the credit and pay for both of us. He slumps down into the seat and looks out the window.
I feel as if I shouldn’t leave him alone, although I’m not sure if it’s him that shouldn’t be alone, or me. Surreptitiously I run the
flat of my hand over his thigh. He glances over at me and smiles a little.
“You are one son of a bitch,” he says.
“Have you talked to Liu Wen?” I asked.
“Not since the night the three of us went out.”
“He is an unusual person,” I say.
Haitao laughs dryly. “You have such a way of putting things. Yes. Liu Wen is unusual.” He watches out the window for a moment. “Maybe I’ll call him. Do you have an early class on Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Then Saturday. Maybe we’ll go play pressball, if he’ll pay.”
“Is he rich?”
“Sometimes. When he has a good week.”
“What does he do?”
“Cui cui.
”
Hurry-hurry? Slang is the most difficult part of Mandarin for me. “What’s that?”
“Sells himself.”
My face must betray me. Haitao breaks out laughing. “You are right, it’s good to come out with you, you cheer me up. You look as if I told you he murders little girls.”
“Why does he dress that way if he,
cui cui?”
“Because they like it. Talk softly.”
“You say I always talk softly,” I hiss, feeling the heat rise in my face. I glance around, the bus is nearly empty.
“Well, don’t stop. Do you not want me to call him?”
I want very badly to play pressball, I want to get ten points. I’ve never been out with a man who goes for money. I mean, pick-ups, of course. When I was fifteen I used to go out to Coney Island and wait to get picked up, and when I was older, go to pick up, but not for money.
“What’s wrong with it?” Haitao says.
“It spreads disease,” I say.
He rolls his eyes. “I won’t call him.”
“No,” I say, “call him.”
“We are corrupting you,” he says, then laughs. I, of course, do not find this funny.
 
 
New clothes. I have waited all week for Saturday night. Because Haitao likes it that way I have tied my hair back. My suit is black and in Haitao’s words, “So ruthlessly conservative it’s not. Everyone will think you’re a vid artist or something.”
Liu Wen, sitting on the couch and needing his hair brushed, as usual, approves. “Pretty,” he says. “Need to make some money on the side?”
“No,” I say curtly.
He grins at Haitao. Liu Wen is wearing a business suit coat that has seen better days, over gray tights that have been worn so often that they bag at the knees. Haitao is in white and looks, this evening, perfect. He is also in a good mood. A delightful mood. His hair is freshly trimmed, he smells ever so slightly of ocean and evergreen. He smiles when he sees me, gives me a beer which I shouldn’t have but which I drink anyway.
We look as if we are going to three completely different places.
“You look like a bride,” I tell Haitao.
Liu Wen laughs, “I told him he looks like a funeral.”
“Funerals in the West are still in black,” I say.
“And brides in the East wear red,” Haitao says.
“The East is red,” Liu Wen says, “and now that we’ve had our cultural exchange hour finish your beers because I’m hungry.”
But we don’t. Haitao doesn’t want to leave yet, he wants to watch the sunset from his window. So we talk, about my engineering mark, about Liu Wen’s week (in carefully vague terms). Liu Wen has apparently had a fair week, business-wise.
Outside the window it is the West which is red. The towers of the overcity, the new communes, rise above Nanjing. The sides
that face west are red, and those between us and the horizon are black silhouettes. Red and black, the colors of good luck. While Liu Wen and I talk, I watch Haitao. He is engrossed in the window. The city goes blue-gray, and we sit in the half-light until it is almost dark, finally silent, as the lights come on in the city.
“I want to give you each something,” Haitao says, “you have both been my friends through this difficult time.”
Liu Wen looks amused. I’m taken a bit aback. To Liu Wen he gives a ring set with Australian opal. “It is not your style, I am aware,” Haitao says, smiling, “but it is one of my favorites.”
Liu Wen looks perplexed but tries it on. It fits his smallest finger.
To me Haitao gives a small gold box set with a tiger eye. “It’s very old,” he says, “Qing Dynasty, 1600s. Open it.”
Inside it says
Guai-zi,
Ghost.
“A tiger eye always seemed a bit
guai-yi”
—strange, or unusual, same first character as ghost—“and so I thought of your assumed name,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. Chinese people do not usually give gifts in this way, they normally leave the gift and you look at it after they are gone. I am uncomfortable and so is Liu Wen.
Haitao says, “Let’s go.”
The hall is painfully light, and Haitao’s eyes are too bright. As if he was about to cry. But he moves quickly, excited. “Are we going to the new place?” he asks Liu Wen.
“If you want,” Liu Wen says. “I don’t care where we go.”
“Somewhere where business is good,” Haitao says, watching me and smiling. Liu Wen grins. I am still confused by the little ritual, I wonder if I should have had something. I search for something to say.
“Something I have wanted to ask,” I say, hearing in my own voice the diffidence that Haitao teases me about.
Liu Wen cocks an eyebrow as if to say, Yes?
“The last time we went out, why did we go to the tomb of Zhong Shan?”
Liu Wen grins again. “Did you think we were trying to tell you something?”
“I didn’t know,” I answer.
“No reason,” Haitao says. “Truly. We often go to the park, but usually we walk down the Avenue of Stone Animals. Just once we were there it seemed fitting to go by the tomb.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Liu Wen asks.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“Why do you ask people to call you just ‘Zhang’?”
“If your first name were ‘Zedong’ would you want people to call you that?”
Liu Wen shakes his head, “I understand why you don’t use Zhong Shan. But to just call you Zhang sounds … well, rude. If you know what I mean. Don’t you have a nickname?” I know what he means, it sounds too short. Chinese people like names to come in two syllables.
“Rafael,” I say.
“Shemma?”
“Rafael.”
“Ur-ah-fa—”
They both try it. Mandarin has a different “r” than the West, and they have difficulty ending with an “l.” They keep wanting to end with a vowel, since Mandarin ends in a vowel, an “n” or an “ng.”
“Ur-ah-fa-eh-la,” Haitao manages.
I shake my head, “Rafaela is a woman’s name.”
“So, Zhang,” Liu Wen says heartily, “how do you like it here in China?”
“We can’t call you Xiao Zhang,” Haitao says. Xiao Zhang would be the diminutive, “Young Zhang.” It’s like saying ‘Billy’ for ‘Bill.’
“‘Lao Zhang,’” Liu Wen laughs. Elder Zhang.
“Must be the suit,” I say.
We eat a leisurely dinner. Pork and bamboo shoots, french fries, Sichuan (spicy) cabbage. I drink two beers, I know I shouldn’t but it’s always hard for me to eat spicy food without
pijiu.
We get down to the warehouse district. I assume that we are going to the same club, but Liu Wen leads us to a heavy red door—was the last door red? I cannot remember. Up the stairs we go into a red and gold place, full of rooms with two or three tables in each and gilt sitting platforms along the walls. Some of the tables have men and women at them, which surprises me. We wander through a maze.
Liu Wen buys Haitao a mao-tai and I have a beer. Liu Wen says he’ll be back. I gaze, mesmerized, at the gold light rising like mist off the tables.
“You have an unusual face,” Haitao says.
I am not bad-looking, I know. Not truly handsome, the way Liu Wen would be if he chose to be. I fancy I hear wistfulness in Haitao’s voice, little does he know how much I envy him, a Chinese citizen, worldly and polished.
“Do you know where in China your family was from?” Haitao asks.
“My gene scan said that my mother’s family was apparently Philippine
huaqiao,”
I say. It didn’t make any difference. Since I qualified by working on Baffin Island, I could still go to Nanjing University without having to qualify for a
huaqiao
seat. Competition for the
waiguoren
seats is fierce. Many candidates, few places.
If my genetic map is within tolerance, then I am Chinese, right?
Physically, if not culturally. I mean, they are obviously not concerned with the information in my files, that my mother is not Chinese. The University has to know. Someone at the University, at least.
“You are more yourself tonight,” I say.
He looks thoughtful. “Truly?”
“Have you heard any more about your friend?” I ask.
“Let’s not talk about it,” he says. He puts his hand on my arm, looking off across the room, and then shudders.
Idiot, I shouldn’t have said anything. I search for other topics. “How did you meet Liu Wen?” I ask.
“Through friends,” he says. “I don’t really know Liu Wen very well. I like him though, he has been good for me.” He smiles sadly, “So have you, ghost.”
“Have you been here before?” I ask, trying to push him away from this mood.
He nods.
Liu Wen comes back and I am relieved to see him. If we play, Haitao will be distracted. “We’re at a table in the back,” he says. A young girl with a smooth white face and painted eyebrows comes to lead us to our table. I watch the swing of her narrow hips in her imperial Chinese gown embroidered with cranes and realize suddenly, she is not a woman.
Fascinated and more than a little amazed I cannot take my eyes off the boy. He gestures with exaggerated grace, catching hold of one sleeve and pointing with the other hand. He keeps his eyes cast down, glancing up at me only as I pass him. He doesn’t smile and his eyes flicker down.
Am I aroused? No, only curious. There is nothing in cross-dressing I find stimulating.
But I watch him walk away, watch his hips swing, and look back to see Liu Wen grinning.
Into the golden glow. There are the five balls; one black lacquer, one red lacquer, two silver and in the center, a golden ball, almost invisible in the glow. Liu Wen flicks the silver ball directly at me and I barely manage to avoid taking it. I ricochet the red ball off the edge hoping it will come back towards me and Haitao hooks it in a long gliding curve and captures it and we drop out of contact. So fast.
“My point,” Haitao says. He is all edge and excitement, and I think, this will be his night.
And it is. Even Liu Wen and I together can’t stop him.
Every time we break contact Haitao is more exhilarated. His color is high, sweat beads along his upper lip and his wisps of hair lie wet at his temples in fine black curves like pen strokes. His hands rest lightly on the table edge, fingernails pink with perfect white half-moons. He doesn’t move and yet like a cat, perfectly relaxed, he has the air of something on the edge of motion.
We break contact and Haitao says, “Seven,” and I am clenching the table, my palms wet. He smiles, perfect white teeth, golden skin, white clothes and all wrapped in golden light. White and gold and electric. Liu Wen looks at him hungrily, and so do I.
Haitao looks down at the table, the light under his eyes carving his normal flat face into planes and high cheeks. His eyes are hooded. Liu Wen opens his mouth as if to say something—I know what he is going to say, to stop the game, and I want him to say it and I don’t because I want the game to end but I don’t want Liu Wen to get Haitao—and we drop back into contact.

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